


Future Days

by Llucc



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, Bounty Hunter Din Djarin, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Loss, Cobb/Din is background but its there i promise, Crash Landing, Dehydration, Desert, Developing Relationship, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Din Djarin Whump, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Confused, Emotionally Repressed, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Ghomrassen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Din Djarin, M/M, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Post Season 2 Finale, Queerplatonic Relationships, Soft Din Djarin, Starvation, The Mandalorian (TV) Season 2, The Mandalorian (TV) Season 2 Spoilers, The Mandalorian (TV) Spoilers, Touch-Starved Din Djarin, heatstroke, it takes a while but it gets there, stab
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:54:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28585308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llucc/pseuds/Llucc
Summary: Din had to face it.Gnash it and force it down.Grogu was gone.And he wasn't coming  back.Din Djarin deals with the emotional aftermath of giving his son to the Jedi. He is finding it hard to cope, because the enemies in his head can't be punched. His reckless actions of grief land him on Tatooine, where a certain Cobb Vanth awaits. Struggles ensue, but in the end Din finds what he was been unknowingly searching for his whole life.A family.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 11
Kudos: 60





	Future Days

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Salvation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949031) by [thirdholmes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirdholmes/pseuds/thirdholmes). 



> \- for the sake of my fic, let's say the Razor Crest wasn't blown to smithereens.  
> \- i am not an expert on Star Wars, if i fuck up, please let me know. i'll fix it. :)  
> \- inspired by "Future Days" by Pearl Jam, and "The Wisp Sings" by Winter Aid.  
> \- i'll put a warning on Divanth intensity (queerplatonic relationship) on every chapter. this chapter has 0 Divanth.  
> \- if you want to know what Din is cursing, here you go: https://mandowords.tumblr.com/post/189987354716/how-do-you-curse-in-mandoa
> 
> thank you to thirdholmes for making me want to write again. and now making me ship Din and Cobb.

The air was empty.

Every breath was constricting. Every sigh a loss.

The silence was deafening.

It called him a fool. It called him a father.

A father in the same way he was a Mandalorian. Broken; discarded.

No true father gave up their kid.

No true Mandalorian removed their helmet.

But that was what scared him. He had meant every motion as he looked at Grogu. He had meant every mannerism, every twitch of his lips into a sorrowful smile, the tears that turned his gaze watery.

Wasn’t this the paradox? In cementing his story as a Mandalorian, he gave up being a Mandalorian.

And that was okay.

He had made peace with this decision after the bounty droid saw his face, that he would give up everything he had for the child. But he didn’t know that everything he had, everything he valued _was_ Grogu, so when he let the child go to the Jedi, that _was_ his everything. And he gave up all he had to ensure his child’s future.

Like a parent.

Like a _father_.

But it _hurt_.

It hurt worse than a blaster shot, worse than a cut from a vibroblade, because he couldn’t take something for the pain, the ache, the deep longing that weighed him down; it shackled him with cold hard metal and pulled at him every time he took a step, every time he reached for a friend who desperately wanted to help.

But he couldn’t accept their help.

How could he?

So many people had seen him with his helmet off now. The bounty droid. Mayfield and the rest of the _hut’uun_ Empire soldiers in that room. And then he took it off for Grogu, in the end, and near all his allies who saw the back of his messy brown hair.  
Fennec, Cara, Koska, Bo-Katan, even _kriffing_ Moff Gideon.

There could be no ‘forgetting’ like he did with Mayfield, though he never forgot. He just pushed it aside, burying it deep. It nagged at him, and the only way he could keep his mind off of it was Grogu.

But there was no Grogu.

There was no small hand to hold his finger.

There were no brown eyes looking up at him.

There was no breathing on the hammock above him when he went to sleep. So, he didn’t sleep anymore, and when he did it was in the pilot’s chair, the kid’s metal sphere gripped tightly in his hand even in unconsciousness because his mind knew what would happen if he lost it.

If he lost it, he would surely lose himself.

Din physically flinched, momentarily freed from his thoughts; bursting through storming waves to catch a breath of air before he was dragged down.

That thought brought memories rushing forth like waves, ones he had desperately tried to bury.

Mandalorians had taught him to compartmentalize, shove all the people you killed in a corner of your mind and consult with it later, because if you don’t, you won’t be alive to consult it.  
But he couldn’t quite compartmentalize this.

How he hummed some obscure song he heard from a backwater moon orbiting a planet he couldn’t remember. The song was old, in a time long ago when humans remembered where they were from.

Din had walked up to the bartender and asked what the song was. On a stroke of esoteric luck, the woman knew the song. Din thanked her, flipped credits for bone broth for the kid, and soaked up every word playing over the speakers.

He remembered how he stayed in the bar longer than he normally would’ve. Grogu caught on, wondering why his father stayed absorbing the customer’s stares, but Din gave him his metal sphere and Grogu happily clanked it against silverware, forgetting his confusion.

When they headed back to the ship, Din hummed it under his breath. Grogu’s too big ears twitched at the sound, eyes peering up at him in wonder.

The second time the song came up, he mumbled it as he watched Grogu play with the metal ball and a small cord of cut cable.  
Din fiddled with his hands as he breathed the words, watching the bundled child as if he might disappear.

> _“If I ever were to lose you  
>  I’d surely lose myself”_

The third time the song came up, he sang it as he watched Grogu sleep.

The kid had been grabbed by a bounty hunter that day, held at knifepoint on the desert planet of Tatooine.  
Din remembered how his stomach dropped, how fear flashed through him, how his eyes widened beneath his helmet.  
He got Grogu back with a jetpack trick.

Now he sat and watched his son breathe, reminding him that he was still alive.

> _“I believe  
>  And I believe ‘cause I can see  
>  Our future days  
>  Days of you and me”_

The fourth time he sang it was the night before they went to the Jedi temple Ahsoka spoke of.

Din was sitting in his pilot’s chair, hands on the steering. Grogu had looked up at him from Din’s leg, arms wrapped around it like it was a tree trunk.  
The Mandalorian thought for a moment, then picked up the child and sat him on his lap. 

He put the small green hands on the steering, and then covered them with his own. He taught him where the steering controls were, where the thrusters could be ignited. Din asked Grogu for the metal sphere, and after much consideration, Grogu relinquished it. Din screwed it back on and moved the knob up and down so the kid could feel the vibrations of the engines thrum.

The child giggled joyfully, and Din smiled.

He put his hands back over Grogu’s and let him tug at the ship.  
The expression on the kid’s face was something he didn’t want to forget. His visage had broken into an elated smile, his big brown eyes wide and filled with glee, reflecting the cosmos outside.

> _“All the promises at sundown  
>  I meant them like the rest  
>  All the demons used to come around  
>  I’m grateful now they’ve left”_

The last time he sang it was when Grogu was gone.

He was sitting on the pilot’s chair, helmet discarded next to him.  
Grogu’s metal ball laid in his bare hand. It felt different without the gloves on, the metal cold in his touch. The grooves in the sphere drew against his skin like dull claws.

His head hung from his shoulders, his dark eyes staring at the ball, unblinking.

The desolate man was still, alone in the ship that had been repaired so much it was more alien than his own. 

More alien than it was his home.

Because what made it his home was gone.

Din had inhaled, a shaky shuddering breath that caught in his throat.

> _“So persistent in my ways  
>  Hey, Angel, I am here to stay  
>  No resistance, no alarms—”_

Din’s voice had cracked. It broke like a dam, tears freshly flowing down his face like rain; fat drops with unbroken streams catching in his unkempt stubble. The water dropped and made the purple spots under his eyes glisten, it adhered to his lips and made salt burst onto his tongue.

> _“Please,”_

he’d choked,

> _“this is just too good to be gone.”_

And he had cried.

A red light brought him from his reverie.

The tracking fob in his hand blinked its light more rapidly.

Din blinked at it.

Oh, right. The bounty.

Din remembered the puck Greef had given him.  
Ever since Din had betrayed the Guild, it proved more than difficult to properly find work. When Din had helped Greef and Cara destroy the Imperial base on Nevarro, it certainly helped his reputation, but not entirely. There was still some distrust in the few original bounty hunters remaining, (and rightfully so), but Greef thought it fine for them to meet at the bar like they always did.

He knew how Din felt about change.

The former magistrate had sat in a way Din couldn’t read. It was relaxed, a tin of spotchka resting by his left hand, but he looked rigid; pent up as if he had words to say but couldn’t voice, and they remained in him, buzzing like trapped hornets.  
But then he spoke and Din wondered if he had read him wrong. He had said things he couldn’t remember, and Din replied with either a nod or a stare through his helmet.  
When Greef took the puck out and placed it carefully on the table, immediately Din knew that something was up. His movements were too precise, too calculated. It seemed like Greef’s expressions were being measured too, as if he was being watched, scrutinized. Mind firing on all cylinders, Din’s body had reflexively tensed, possible situations shooting through his mind like blasterfire. 

Had a threat been made?

Was there a bomb somewhere?

Did the Empire come back?

Din searched in Greef’s gaze, trying vainly to pull a fragment of information out of it, anything that could tell him what was going on— but then suddenly, he saw it; it was a glint of something hidden behind a curtain, it was a dull shimmering behind a door left ajar.

It was melancholy. 

Pity.

Guilt.

For him.

Enmity churned in him then, frothing in rabidity. He didn’t need this, this acquitted sorrow, this forlorn look in Greef’s eyes. He didn’t need pity; he did what he had to as a Mandalorian: a member of the Death Watch. He gave up all he’d known for the foundling he was supposed to protect.

This was the Way.

It was what he’d planned to do all along.

He just wished it hadn’t been so hard. 

But it had been, and somehow it was comforting to know that giving up Grogu was difficult. Somewhere in him over the past two years he knew he loved Grogu, he knew how much he meant to him, but he never truly admitted it to himself until he sent the transmission to Moff Gideon.

 _’You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not. Soon, he will be back with me. He means more to me than you will_ ever _know._ ’

And it was true. He’d meant every word, every syllable, every breath.

Greef handed the puck to him as if he were annealed glass, as if any movement would cause him to shatter, to break into a million microscopic pieces that couldn’t be glued back together.

Din hated it. 

Even Greef’s exhales looked precise, like if the air was too heavy Din would crack.

It seemed the beskar couldn’t protect him from everything, because Din had already fractured.

He had taken the puck from Greef’s hand, and from the look on the man’s face it was obvious Din was radiating barely contained animosity. As soon as he looked Greef in the eyes again and saw that careful infuriating sorrow, Din’s fragile temper snapped; he stood quickly from the table, chair flying backward, fists bunched at his sides and practically glowering down at Greef because he didn’t want his sadness, his pity. Din _knew_ he was sad because Grogu was gone, he _knew_ the hollow feeling in his chest when he woke every night to remember Grogu’s absence.  
He didn’t want people’s sadness because he had made his choice. It was like they forgot Grogu hadn’t been taken from him in the end, that Din had relinquished him to the Jedi’s foreign embrace. He wished they’d just stop looking at him like someone was dying, because no-one was.

But then Din read Greef’s startled expression; it was one of disorientation, worry, and confusion, his back pressed against the chair, hand instinctively hovering over his blaster, eyebrows knitted together.

Din’s stance softened, even if just for a moment. Greef was one of the people who could read him through his beskar, who saw past the bounty hunter and the helmet and to the man behind it. He didn’t deserve this, this sudden burst of emotion that Din had no concept of how to contain. He had always kept them controlled, suppressed, but a lot of things changed when he met Grogu. The kid had brought out so much in him, and he’d departed as suddenly as he came. It left Din exposed, vulnerable like a caged animal who bit the hand that cared for it.

He knew Greef had read his remorse then, and Din had no words to say. As he stood at the table, he hesitated, an apology on his lips he couldn’t formulate. After a few long moments of bar patrons staring at the unforeseen outburst, the bristling Mandalorian, the ousted chair, Din placed his previous bounty’s tracking fob and puck on the table, and walked away before Greef could say anything about what’d happened or the bounty Din had just wordlessly accepted. At that moment, he didn’t care how much was on this bounty’s head, nor who he was hunting, he just wanted it to be far away. 

He would regret it later.

Din knew Greef would contact him about the bounty’s information via the _Razor Crest_ ’s comms, and when he played the message, he felt a twinge of annoyance rise in his throat.

“Mando,” the message began, the blue holographic form of Greef flickering slightly, “The bounty you have is on a woman named Haanasi Torth. It’s worth twenty thousand credits, which will clue you in that it's dangerous.” There was a soft edge in the man’s voice, as if frustrated by Din’s actions the last time they met. He couldn’t blame him; he was frustrated with himself too.

Emotions had never truly blinded him until he met the kid. He’d managed to muzzle them, keep them in check until they nipped at the bit, but now they ruled him like a tyrant king, pulling him this way and that in ways he couldn’t predict. He hated it, but it made it all worth it when he saw Grogu’s smile.

But now he couldn’t anymore.

And what he felt wasn’t worth the trouble.

So he sunk back into what he was before, a bounty hunter… but he could be a true Mandalorian no longer. Everything he knew since he was a boy had been tossed away for his son.

He kept his helmet on, not in remembrance of his creed, but as a reminder for what he’d sacrificed.

“It’s a whole base, Mando,” the pre-recorded holo had gone on, and Din told himself not to cringe at the outdated moniker, “around twenty of her pirate crew are stationed on the Tatooine moon of Ghomrassen. The place where they’ve sheltered is an old mining colony, long out of operation, but they still have their scanners up and running. The tech’s ancient, so you should be fine with the thermo-chip you fitted on the _Razor Crest_. Meteors fly and burn up in the atmosphere more often than not there, so if you’re smart, you can make your heat-sig look similar.”  
Greef suddenly stopped, as if he had something else to say, eyes searching the void, but then he abruptly continued. “Dust storms can get wild there, and the metal content in the dust can interfere with their comm systems. Do with that information what you will. I don’t think I need to spell it out for you.”  
Then he’d paused and looked Din dead in the eyes as if he could see in him, see the anger and frustration boiling to the brim.  
“But don’t be stupid, Mando. She’s smart. There’s a reason she has a firm grip on twenty trigger-happy pirates.”  
Then the man stopped again, and his eyes turned sad, concerned even. Din could see how he was finding the words to say, even though he’d undoubtedly rehearsed them in his head many times.  
“Talk to us, Din,” Greef started, his words in hyperdrive because he knew he needed to say them fast. “We’re all here for you, just—”

Din had slammed his fist on the holo-emitter, the blue figure waving erratically as the recorded message cut abruptly, tears burning the backs of his eyes.

He didn’t want to ‘talk’.

He wanted Grogu.

The tracking fob creaked, and Din’s eyes snapped down at it. Immediately he loosened his grip, not realizing how tight he’d been holding it.

It was blinking steadily as Ghomrassen came into view.

The moon was notably bigger than Chenini and Guermessa, and it looked like the spitting image of Tatooine. It had enough of a habitable atmosphere to have a blue hue around the rim, and sure enough there were asteroids burning up in it like blown-out matches.

Din took the ball from his pocket and screwed it on the thruster knob, gradually lowering the thrusters’ intensity until the engines were just a hum in the hull.  
He didn’t know how far exactly Torth’s scanners extended, and there was always the chance that Greef’s information was unknowingly outdated.

Punching in the coordinates, he wavered. A wave of dizziness rammed into him and he gripped the sides of the pilot’s chair for support. He soon realized the pit in his stomach wasn’t guilt from his altercation with Greef, it was hunger.

He blinked, fumbling around dumbly for the switch to autopilot. Planting his feet assuredly on the floor, he pushed himself up, his hand now gripping the top of the chair tightly, the other bracing the side of the wall.

When he felt like he might not topple over, he took a few careful steps across the room, descending the ladder slowly; when he felt like he didn’t need a wall for balance, he chanced a walk athwart the lower floor of the ship, beelining for the food compartments.

He rummaged through a drawer, and after a few moments pulled his hand out, triumphant: a jango-fruit flavored nutrient block in his grip.

Din turned around, his back towards his and Grogu’s— _his_ sleeping quarters and opened the packet, tipping his helmet up just enough where he could put the bar in his mouth.  
He tossed the wrapper in the adjacent trash-chute, making sure not to look at the discarded womprat jerky bags, and headed up to the cockpit.

The jerky—it was Grogu’s favorite.

It was why he hadn’t emptied it.

It was one of the only things he had left of him.

Din took it slow as he ascended the ladder, knowing that his swimming head hadn’t surfaced yet. He tried not to think about how his stomach felt sick, how somehow the nutrient block passed for food.

Crossing the cockpit, he sat down in the pilot’s chair.  
He ignored how his legs didn’t feel so solid, as if they’d snap like dry twigs with every step he took. Din flipped the switch on autopilot to off, adjusted his grip on the steering, and ignored that the dizziness hadn’t gone away yet.

After all, it was the first thing he had eaten in two days.

~ 

Din had his thoughts about Ghomrassen as he entered the moon’s atmosphere.

It was much rockier than Tatooine, which made it somewhat difficult to land. With the engines burning lowly like Greef told him, he had to make his landing decision quickly. 

Din had a spot picked out that was comfortably close to Torth’s base, and he thought he had placed his ship accordingly, but with the dust-filled air that caused low visibility and strong winds his thrusters he couldn’t counteract, it was one of the rougher landings he’d had in his days.

When the ship touched down, it had already been veering to the right, and he could only fight the moon’s gravity so much without signalling Torth. It immediately began to skid, dust and rocks flying up in the air like debris from a drill. Din could hear and feel the rocks scraping the bottom of the hull, the insistent pattering of detritus on the right side of the ship.

The whole debacle only lasted for a few seconds, but to Din it felt like forever.

Adrenaline burned hot in his blood, his hands gripping at the steering as he tried to keep his head from ricocheting in his helmet. Instinctively, his right hand shot out, splayed and reaching until he realized there wasn’t a small body buckled in the seat behind him. 

There hadn’t been one for two weeks.

Suddenly the ship shuttered, and his outstretched hand now braced against one side of the hull. He looked up to see what he hit; the right nacelle clipped roughly on a particularly ragged-looking boulder which the rest of the ship barely missed, and it made him cringe. Even he could feel the nacelle’s metal contort in ways it hadn’t since it had been forged.

The _Razor Crest_ ’s inertia was more plentiful than he had realized. After consideration, Din dared to use the rightward-facing thrusters to counteract the force, hoping Torth’s thermal scanners were affected by the storm. It was just in time, as a silhouette larger than the ship was appearing in the dusty air of the right window. Luckily, his timing was near perfect; the right wing merely tapped the great shelf of rock before the ship rocked to the left, centering itself on no-doubt rough-looking landing gear. They had survived worse, he supposed; the ravinak on Maldo Kreis sure had a good grip on the gear, and in the end it had fared fine and needed only minimal repairs.

He just hoped that today would be a similar case.

Din sat still for a few moments, as if preparing himself for the ship to suddenly fall through the ground like it had (yet again) on Maldo Kreis, spiders swarming them.

He sighed after a few moments, turning off the spacecraft.

Crossing the cockpit, he ran over every sound he heard and bump he felt, trying to assess the _Crest_ ’s damage. _It couldn’t be too bad_ , he thought as he descended the ladder, walking to his weapons compartment and equipping his rifle, storing a pair of bonds, as well as the spear of beskar. He pulled on his jetpack as well, mindful of the rifle and tattered cloak. The journey to Tython to retrieve it was easy, but stepping on the planet wasn’t.

Their ship had a rougher landing on Trask, he remembered as he walked to the panel controls. Here they’d hit some rocks along the way, sure, but it wasn’t enough to breach hull integrity.  
At the thought of ‘breach’, he made sure to snag a roll of PVC tape, just in case.

Din made his way over to the hangar door controls, flipping a switch for manual control. He wanted to make the hatch’s opening as small as he could, accounting that he would be returning with Torth. He didn’t want sand in the ship, it always managed to get somewhere it shouldn’t, whether it be the gearboxes, Grogu, or wiring manifol—  
Then he suddenly stopped, like a machine with a glitch in the system, his slightly quaking hand pressing against the hatch release button.

There was no ‘they’. 

_He_ cut the ship through the atmosphere.

 _He_ guided the ship through the storm.

 _He_ had hit some rocks on the way down.

It was just him.

Alone.

The man stayed that way, a breath caught in his throat until he realized he needed to breathe again. That he needed to take his hand off the release button.

Din squeezes his eyes shut, his hand moving towards the vent controls in his helmet and switching it to the appropriate setting to account for dust. When the helmet clicked, he inhaled deeply, trying to quell the anxious shaking that was building in his chest. 

He was alone.

He was a bounty hunter.

There was a contract he needed to fulfill.

 _Get over it_ , he chastised himself, opening his eyes and walking to the ship’s exit.

But this wasn’t something he could get over.

Two years, gone. Nearly all nights and days spent together.  
Blown away like the sands outside; inconsequential. 

Blown away like the people he knew; insignificant.

His mother; trivial.

His father; unimportant.

Kuill; worthless.

But they weren’t.  
They had been important— an anchor.

Perhaps—perhaps if he’d done something different—he could’ve saved them-he could’ve—

“Stop,” he whispered to the enemies in his head, ceasing their parade.  
Their voices melted into the windy rushes of dunes, but their claws didn’t loosen.

He just needed to grab Torth, dead or alive, and get out.

That was his job, that was his contract. His obligation.

The bounty hunter took a breath, shifted his stance, adjusted the rifle-strap, and slipped through the hatch’s opening.

**Author's Note:**

> next chapter: ...I'd surely lose myself."
> 
> alllrighty, thanks for getting this far. school is going for me, so i hope to be able to write things, but it depends on if people actually want to read this. this is a passion project, so i'll get every chapter done. just school. E_E  
> a special thanks to my proofreaders, @Ayden600 and Cyamites (you know who you are), who i couldn't have done this without.
> 
> thanks. <3


End file.
